Carl's Corner used to have a decent breakfast restaurant that turned into a strip joint in the afternoons late into the night.

RIP, Carl Cornelius

Before you move to any area, check the property tax and insurance rates. IF, you want to play golf and fish very often that is. Main question is how far from shopping or a mall does your wife need to be? Plenty of nice places to live northwest and northeast of Austin in your price range. Golf is good...fishing is pretty good. FYI, for those mentioning Decker, it's closed for at least a year or two to anything but kayaks as they "work on the dam". Good little lake when it's open though.

Look into Jarrell and Florence, about the size of Salado.

I move to Oklahoma before I’d live within a100 miles of Austin!

A few of my high school classmates moved to Austin. I've visited them. If you know your way around. Austin can be a fun place to visit. I personally wouldn't live there but hey. I can get the vibe on why someone would.

I won’t live any farther south than Georgetown. Thanks for info so far.

Georgetown has retirement villages in between the gap with Round Rock.

Big money to live there. The guy I knew who had a house close to one of the communities. Was a boiler engineer for a multinational company. He got in when prices weren't bad. Huge house and enough enjoyable land. Big spaces between neighbors. Cops that pull you over if they don't recognize the ride.

Coupland is a nice spot.

Amongst black dirt farm land.

And the Coupland Inn. Great honky tonk. Saw Gene Watson there.

Keep in mind that anything south of Belton the fishing is sparce due to the drought.

I live 5 miles north of cove and its very quiet outside the city limits. HH is all the upity peeps as well as Salado. As far as the fishing scene you got Belton, Stillhouse, and waco in the area. Good luck.

Scouted Salado today. What a cool little town with tons of character! Golf course looked great and we found a neighborhood nearby with new houses being built that check all the boxes. My wife fell in love with the area so there’s that.

Salado is growing much to the residents dismay. It’s not Austin yuppies or whatever someone said, jarrell is little austin . It’s old money vs new. Stay away from the Sanctuary and around the schools off 2484 and Williams. Amity is nice, but mill creek runs the town.

Out 2484 there are some newer subdivisions being built, so 2484 will start expanding next year to 4 lanes which will be a mess.
A lot of new development on the east side as well. Belton is where you’ll shop for the most part unless you just like Georgetown, they have a Costco on the north side.

Thanks Tree. We looked at neighborhoods on the west side by those schools and immediately ruled them out. We really liked the east side. Drakes landing is the hood we liked. We looked at the sanctuary but didn’t like all the 2 stories in there and there wasn’t any houses that matched our needs.

Traffic is a mess! Toll roads are your friend! Area is growing FAST just like most of Texas. I fish that area a lot and it is getting way to many people moving into it. Lots of water bodies to fish, but as mentioned before they are very crowded especially during summer. Round Rock, George Town, and Hutto are nice cities. A little ways out you have Liberty Hill, Burnet, Marble Falls, and Lampasas. All seem to be good places to live.

Go west of Austin about 50 miles or more. Small town life is good.